Jamey Johnson pays Hank Cochran fitting tribute

Dale Dodson, Cochran’s close friend and the co-producer (with Buddy Cannon) of Jamey Johnson’s gorgeous new Cochran tribute album, says, “Nobody put himself through more hell than Hank: He’d get in the lowest of lows, put himself in a deep state of depression, and pour that out in eight lines of a song.”

And Johnson says, “Hank was not a sorrowful person. Hank was a happy man.”

They’re probably all correct. That’s the thing. Throughout most of his

74 years, Cochran was whatever he needed to be in order to write whatever he needed to write.

“Using words for my lifeline, forsaking all just for a rhyme,” he wrote in the tribute’s title track. “Building steps I know I can’t climb, living for a song.”

He lived to write them, and lived to pitch them to singers, as well. And he did those things at a remarkable level.

Merle Haggard and Hank Cochran in 2009 (Photo: Peyton Hoge)

Haggard, who is quite often referred to as the greatest writer of country songs, called Cochran the greatest writer of country songs. Cochran wrote or co-wrote “Make the World Go Away,” “I Fall To Pieces,” “The Chair,” “Don’t You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me,” “She’s Got You” and a bunch of other country classics.

“To put together an album full of Hank Cochran songs that have meaning and impact, it’s not difficult at all,” Johnson says. “What was difficult was not recording the other 1,000 Hank Cochran songs that have meaning and impact.”

Johnson, who himself has co-written two CMA and ACM song of the year winners, befriended Cochran near the end of the legendary writer’s life. (Cochran died at 74, in 2010, after years of faltering health.) By the time they met, Johnson had experienced major success as a writer and a performer, and at every interaction Cochran would pitch songs to Johnson.

“He would never, ever drop it,” Johnson says. “If he wanted you to do a song, every time you saw him he’d have that song on him. All the way to the end, he was pitching me a song called ‘I Don’t Do Windows,’ which we have on this album. He was the most persistent song-plugger I’ve ever met. Hank still pitches me songs today.”

When he wasn’t writing or pitching a song, Cochran was often listening to others’ songs.

He brought Country Music Hall of FamerHarlan Howard to Nashville, and he signed Nelson to a publishing contract. (Foregoing a $50-per-week raise due him, Cochran arranged for that money to be used to pay Nelson’s salary.) Cochran was competitive, but never in an elbows-out kind of way, and he viewed songwriting as a brotherhood, not as a competition.

“He had a perspective on life that the rest of us could learn a lot by studying,” Johnson says. “He might write songs that made you cry, but he wrote just as many that made you happy. Hank lived seven lifetimes in the span of one, and he had the gift of subtle brilliance. He always found the most important lesson to be learned in every situation.”

Johnson talked with Cochran about one day recording an album of nothing but Cochran songs, and “Living for a Song” is an elegant fulfillment of those conversations.

Where modern convention is to use words and melody as a springboard to the kind of vocal athleticism in favor on “American Idol,” Johnson favors dignified restraint and emotional clarity. Plus, he and co-producers Cannon and Dodson realized that Cochran’s songs don’t need anything in the way of adornment or updating. The sound is timeless, without being retro or kitschy.

“The only intention we had was to keep Hank Cochran’s songs alive,” Johnson says. “These are the kind of songs that only come from life’s experience. You can tell he wasn’t making this stuff up.”

If You Go

What: Jamey Johnson, album release show for “Living for a Song: A Tribute To Hank Cochran”
Where: Ryman Auditorium, 116 Fifth Ave. N.